Joe Hockey’s claims on Alexander Downer jeopardising Five Eyes ‘not credible’

A claim that Alexander Downer jeopardised the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance is ‘not credible’, DFAT says.

Former Australian high commissioner to Britain Alexander Downer. Picture: AAP

The nation’s top diplomat says Joe Hockey’s claim that Alexander Downer jeopardised the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance by reporting Trump campaign links with Russia is “not credible”.

After his retirement as Australia’s ambassador to the US, Mr Hockey criticised Mr Downer — a former UK high commissioner — for his diplomatic cable that led to the Muller probe into the Trump campaign. “Australia was under pressure on Five Eyes because of the whole Downer issue,” Mr Hockey told Nine newspapers.

“The FBI and CIA were under profound attack, and the Downer issue could have gone really badly for us.”

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adam­son told a Senate estimates hearing that the comments were “just so far from the truth it was my assumption he had not made those remarks — It was not credible at all”, she said.

In a now-famous 2016 encounter, Trump aide George Papadopoulos told Mr Downer in a London bar that Russia had damaging material on Donald Trump’s presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.

He later relayed the information to Canberra via a diplomatic cable, and also told the charge d’affaires of the US ­embassy in London.

Ms Adamson also expressed concern about comments made by current high commissioner to the UK, George Brandis, who enthusiastically endorsed Boris Johnson’s elevation as Prime Minister late in 2019. Mr Brandis told a British think tank the leadership change was a case of “cometh the hour, ­cometh the man”, adding there was a ­“spirit of optimism that just drips from him”.

Ms Adamson said there was often a “particular warmth” between politically appointed diplomats and their counterparts in the countries where they served, but DFAT took its apolitical position seriously, and expected its diplomats to behave professionally at all times.